


A Study In Punk 2: Fight Night

by PoppyAlexander



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 1990s, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Punk, Blow Jobs, Comeplay, Dirty Talk, Drinking, Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, Except that I would spell that Cum Play, Grappling, Gratuitous references to the utter shit we drank in Boston in the 90s, Hand Jobs, Lower Allston, M/M, Old Punks, Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Sherlock smokes, Sherlock's jeans are too tight, Smoking, Ugly bed sheets, Wrestling, Yes Poland Spring Vodka was a real thing, Yes the Ramrod was a real place, and Boston bands, special guest star The Channel as 221B, stunt double The Paradise Rock Club as the interior of 221B
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 08:46:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12055434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: In the fall of 1994, old punks Sherlock and John met in riot grrl Molly's record shop and quickly fell into partnership, deciding to open their "proper punk club" at 221B Baker Street.





	A Study In Punk 2: Fight Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [K2Dangergirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/K2Dangergirl/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Five Times Sherlock And John Met Cute (And One That Was Decidedly Un-cute)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1288150) by [PoppyAlexander](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander). 



> This fic is the continuation of my ficlet "A Study in Punk" from Five Times Sherlock and John Met Cute (and One That was Decidedly Un-Cute). (link above)
> 
> Thank you to K2DangerGirl for sponsoring the completion of this formerly abandoned WIP!
> 
> Thanks to Ariane DeVere for her transcripts of Sherlock episodes, over on LiveJournal.

Baker Street was just off Sleeper Street, and Sherlock hadn’t lied about the club being close to the channel. In fact, the rear dozen-or-so feet of it was built on pilings that vanished beneath the water’s oil-slicked surface. 221B wasn’t much to look at from the outside: a concrete rectangle with three exterior doors visible (two in front, and a double-door at the side for bands to load in gear and liquor suppliers to deliver the bar stock), no windows, walls that were once painted white but had become mottled to the point there was a significant amount of pale grey concrete visible. No marquee, not even a sign. To the left, across the alley, was the rather incongruous sight of a typical South Boston triple-decker, wood siding painted Colonial blue, white trim, small patch of front yard a riot of flowers that reminded John of his gran’s cottage garden back home. Across the street was an enormous stretch of dismal tarmac fenced on all sides with ten-foot-high chainlink: a storage facility for municipal trucks and construction vehicles. To the other side of the club was a car park (too small, John figured, at only a dozen or so not-very-clearly-marked spots). Beyond that, an industrial building. Across the channel lay the financial district—flooded with suit-and-tie types from eight to six on weekdays, an utter ghost town evenings and weekends.

The wind off the water was ferocious. John zipped up the front of his leather jacket, rubbed his hands to warm them as he ambled toward one of the front doors of the place. Just then, Sherlock whizzed up on a black bicycle as slim and angular as he was, almost gracefully swung one leg over to dismount it without even slowing down, riding the last few yards standing on one pedal before jumping off beside John.

“Hello.”

“Aw’right there, Holmes,” John said by way of greeting. God, it felt good to get the English back into his speech. If nothing else, running into Stomp Stamford on Boston Common had at least given John a few blokes from back home to talk to, none of them confused by the great pants-vs-trousers kerfuffle.

Sherlock frowned. “Call me Sherlock. The Holmeses. . .” he didn’t finish, but a theatrical shudder of his shoulders and torso told John what he needed to know. Sherlock leaned his bike against the front of the building.

“Well, this is a prime spot,” John offered. “Must be expensive.”

Sherlock shrugged. “Oh, Mrs Hudson—the landlady—she’s giving me a special deal. Owes me a favour. A few years back, her husband was a morning drive-time radio DJ, got caught up in a payola scandal in Florida. I was able to help out.”

John was incredulous. “Sorry. . .” he said. “You. . .prevented him being sent up for accepting bribes from record companies?”

“Oh, no,” Sherlock smirked. “I ensured it.”

John was utterly baffled about what to do with this. Luckily, he was saved from having to examine it further by a small, older woman in a flowing paisley skirt and long, loosely-crocheted purple cardigan opening the front door of the triple-decker and waving to them.

“Sherlock! Hello!” she called, descending the front stairs and ambling down her little flower-bordered walkway and out through the gate onto the sidewalk. When she reached them, Sherlock walked straight into her arms and they briefly embraced. Sherlock motioned toward John.

“Mrs Hudson. John Watson.”

Mrs Hudson’s hair was in a long grey braid down her back; John figured her for an old hippie, Earth-mother type. She smelled faintly of marijuana smoke and patchouli oil. John stiffened, taken aback, as she reached to embrace him, but quickly gave in; it had been a long time since any kind of mother—Earth- or otherwise—had put arms around him.

“Hello,” she said warmly, drawing back and staring into his eyes as if she could read something there. John decided he liked her, quite a bit. She was English, too. . .another point solidly in her favour.

“How do,” he replied, smiling.

She reached into the neckline of her gauzy blouse and pulled out a ring of keys on a long, braided cord. “Come in,” she invited, fiddling keys in two locks, then gesturing for John to go inside. He thanked her and the three of them passed through the heavy, black door.

They were in a small corridor, facing the box office window—a tiny booth with a high, narrow counter behind plexi; an ancient, analog cash register; and a stool which still had someone’s old hooded sweatshirt hanging on the back of it. Mrs Hudson flicked switch after switch—Sherlock held the door open for sunlight until the rather random assortment of ceiling and wall lights flickered to life, providing a minimal, yellowish glow. The floor and walls were painted black. There were old, Xeroxed flyers tacked all over one wall—nothing of note, local rock bands from the ‘70s and ‘80s. A couple of larger, neon-painted posters for Human Sexual Response and Missing Persons—probably the biggest local guys to have played the place when last it was open—hung among the flyers of long-forgotten bands.

The corridor opened into the main room of the club, a basic rectangle with a stage on the long, rear wall; three bars; and a smaller lounge off to one side. Stairs beside the stage lead up to a balcony wrapping three-quarters of the way around the room, where there were two more bars and a DJ booth. Everything—walls, floor, and ceiling—was painted glossy black, giving the impression of standing inside a box of completely indeterminate size. The stage itself was checkerboard-patterned tiles of black and white. The place smelled of stale cigarettes, spilled beer, and a faint trace of body odor.

John’s voice echoed in the dimly-lit, wood-and-concrete cave and he offered, “Well, this could work. Definitely could work.”

Mrs Hudson stood by, mildly smiling. Sherlock, leaning against the hip-high lip of the stage, dragged on a cigarette and nodded. “Yes,” he agreed, blowing a white plume upward out of the corner of his mouth. “Yes, I think so. My thoughts precisely.” He scanned the place clockwise from one bar, to another, upward toward the light rig and hanging speakers with peeling mesh fronts. “So I went straight ahead and filed the paperwork for the liquor license.”

Simultaneously, John said, “Just have to arrange a bank loan. . .Oh.” He was slightly chagrined to realise Sherlock had already essentially taken possession of the place; John was more unsteady than ever as to what the business relationship was meant to be, Sherlock having already signed a lease and submitted applications to the city without him. If he thought John was going to be some kind of _investor_. . .

“So, this is all—“ John started, squinting at Sherlock—his ink-dark hair hanging nearly over one eye, gangly kneecap exposed by a hole in his over-tight black jeans.

“Well, obviously, we can do up a partnership agreement, DBA certificate in both our names, all that. . .” Sherlock offered, sounding more apologetic in word than in tone.

John was pacing the edges of the central, poured-cement floor in front of the stage, which was down a single step from the rest of the room, creating a pit surrounded by waist-high rails just wide enough for beer bottles and ashtrays. He stopped at the end of the main bar, which took up the better part of the front wall, opposite the stage. He pointed.

“That’s a skull.”

Mrs Hudson looked slightly put out. Sherlock just shrugged again, rangy shoulders taking their time to resettle in their proper place.

“Friend of mine,” he said, deadpan, then added, “Well, I say ‘friend. . .’”

Mrs Hudson smiled indulgently in Sherlock’s direction as if he was an irrepressible scamp. “I’m afraid my house is to the brim at the moment or I’d offer you one of the flats, as well. I’ve got tenants in the top floor for another six months, and the gent in the middle there just signed for a year.” She gestured toward the staircase to the right of the stage, leading up to the balcony. “Although, there’s a little studio upstairs—little bath with a shower, kitchenette—that is, if you don’t need two bedrooms.”

John looked questioningly at Sherlock.

“Well I’m in a house in Lower Allston with seven other people, three cats, two rats, and a lizard, so I’m game,” Sherlock offered with a grin. “It would be awfully convenient.”

John tried not to look too eager. He’d been couch-surfing since the tour had ended nearly three months before. To not have to rely on the kindness of friends and lovers would be a relief.

“Is it safe?” John ventured. “Fire codes and that? Is it legal?”

Mrs Hudson looked coy. “There’s a few windows, you wouldn’t have seen them from out in front. Fire escapes. As for legal. . .” She shrugged and looked naughty. “Don’t worry. There’s allsorts ‘round here. Mrs Turner over on Summer Street’s got metal ones. They’re running an underground tattoo shop in the back of the tool and die maker’s.” She gave another coquettish smile, jangled her necklace of keys and went up the stairs, presumably to unlock the studio apartment for them to look at. More lights flickered to life in her wake.

John cleared his throat, leaned an elbow against the rail around the pit. “I was reading your zine last night,” he said.

Sherlock flicked the butt of his cigarette to the floor by his foot, ground it out with the toe of his boot. “Anything interesting?” he asked, obviously trying to sound like he didn’t care one way or another what John thought of his zine.

“Read that article, _the Philosophy of Post-Punk_.”

Sherlock smiled, clearly chuffed. “What did you think?”

John looked skeptical; Sherlock looked stung.

“You said you could tell a true punk by the smell of his t-shirt, and a poseur by how many MC5 songs he can name in 15 seconds?”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at John, said evenly, “Yes, and I can read your punk career in your face and your trainers. And the implosion of the bands you managed in your walkman.”

“How?”

Sherlock smiled and stood, crossing to the bottom of the stairs as Mrs Hudson come back down, carrying a folded-back copy of the weekly alternative paper.

“What about these groups, then, Sherlock?” she asked gamely, tapping an article with one finger. “I thought that’d be right up your street. Three local bands, it says, recording for major labels in that new studio in East Cambridge.”

“Four,” Sherlock corrected, mildly. “Slash/Warner Brothers signed another one earlier this week.” Mrs Hudson looked pleased, Sherlock only looked annoyed. “Anyone who sounds remotely like they’re from Seattle is being signed to majors.”

A voice from down the entry corridor. “Oi!”

“Here,” Sherlock called back, and was already engaged in leave-taking behaviour: tucking his cigarette pack into the inside pocket of his denim jacket, zipping up the hooded sweatshirt he wore beneath it.

A haggard-looking bloke with silver hair and three days’ growth of stubble on his chin rolled in, looking like he could use a drink, or perhaps had just had a few. John kept his post against the rail, sized up the newcomer. Fiftyish, army surplus trousers with more pockets than were strictly necessary. Red t-shirt with the word OBEY screened on it in yellow.

Sherlock clearly knew him, didn’t even bother with a proper greeting, let alone introductions. “Which?” Sherlock asked casually, as if he knew the bloke’s business without him having to say anything.

“Charlesbank Studios, the new place,” came the reply, in a slightly plummy accent. Bless Sherlock, he apparently knew every displaced Englishman in town.

“You came chasing me down during peak recording hours,” Sherlock intoned. “Something serious.”

“You know how they always sack the one I don’t like?”

“Yeah.”

“These won’t. Will you come?”

Sherlock looked distinctly interested, but deflected with, “Who’s the producer?”

The fella said reluctantly, “It’s Vig.”

Sherlock grimaced. “Vig won’t work with me.”

“Well, he’s not there, anyway. Will you come?” There was a tone in his voice that John interpreted to mean he’d asked favours of Sherlock before, and not a few times.

“Not in that ridiculous car of yours,” Sherlock said, with a mild roll of his eyes.  “I’ll be right behind.”

The bloke’s shoulders sank with relief. “Thank you.”

Within the hour, John was crowded along with Sherlock and the man he now knew to be recording engineer Greg Lestrade into a tiny room overpowered by a mixing board, one too many big leather office chairs, a cat-scratched sofa, and a low table with its top invisible beneath a layer of partially-plundered Chinese food in paper and plastic cartons. Through a plexiglass window John could see a few guitar stands, a rack of pedals and cables, and a decent drum kit of the sort he’d had early on—not like his first kit; more like his third, after the first two had been upgraded one bit at a time over the span of a few years.

“Their whole thing,” Lestrade explained, “is that they’re all girls—you know that’s getting attention right now. I have bleedin’ _begged_ them to sack this drummer; by the time we get through a three minute song, she’ll have gone through six time changes. I even tried a click track and she still can’t keep it together.”

“Show me,” Sherlock demanded. He motioned for John to sit and John did so, picking up a takeaway carton to peek inside—something red-brown and sticky-looking—and since the box was still warm, John reckoned it was safe to eat. He started looking around for utensils as Sherlock dropped down beside him, spreading his knees wide to accommodate them in the small space between sofa and table.

Lestrade, meantime, settled onto one of the boss’s chairs and began cuing tape. John found an egg roll and bit it nearly in half, offered the remainder to Sherlock with a questioning grunt. Sherlock shook his head.

“Eating later with your girlfriend?” John asked, thinking of the riot grrl working at the record shop where he’d first met Sherlock. She’d looked at Sherlock like she owned him, so John imagined she might.

Sherlock’s expression implied John had just dropped a non sequitur—strangely puzzled. “Mm, no. . .” he said slowly. “Girlfriends: not really my area.”

“Oh, right. Sorry,” John fumbled. “Boyfriend, then?”

Lestrade made a noise that might have been a laugh; John shot a quick glance his way but learned nothing of use from the back of his head.

Sherlock cocked his head to the side like an intrigued raven. “No. Haven’t got a boyfriend.”

“Of course that’s fine,” John blathered, shifting his posture and clearing his throat. “It’s the ’90s. You know. Either way—whatever—it’s fine. It’s all—”

“I know it’s fine.”

“—fine,” John finished, painfully aware he sounded like a man protesting far too much.

 “Look,” Sherlock said then, drawing John’s attention back to him. “John. I appreciate your interest.” His tone sounded not-quite-sympathetic, as if Sherlock was delivering a well-rehearsed speech. “But you should know I consider myself married to my work—”

“No, yeah,” John protested immediately. “I wasn’t asking—I didn’t mean—no. Yeah, no. Just.”

Sherlock’s eyebrows rose fractionally; he looked concerned for John’s welfare.

“I just meant,” John shrugged. “Just asking. So. . .you’re single then. Unattached. Like me. That’s good. Good.” He felt his chest flushing hot beneath his t-shirt and shoveled another plastic forkful of sweet-and-sour probably-pork into his mouth to plug it up.

To his great relief, the track finally started playing through speakers set high in the four corners of the room. Sherlock’s eyes narrowed; he leaned back and pressed the edges of tented fingers to his chin in his concentration. The drummer must have learned most of her skills in a school’s marching band; her playing had a monotonous, rat-a-tat military cadence. Quite quickly, John noticed precisely the problem Lestrade had described; the beat slowed as if the drummer was becoming tired, then sped up for a bit before faltering again. Her playing would have been boring, though, John recognised, even if she was able to keep time.

After about a minute and a half of off-tempo snare work, Sherlock leapt to his feet, crossed the small room in two long strides, and slapped his hand down on the mixing board, plunging the room into throbbing silence.

“Well, that’s awful,” he pronounced. “Lucky for you, there’s a decent session player close at hand who’ll save your arse for—who’s financing it?”

“Homestead.”

“—Two hundred and fifty.”

“You’ll do it, then?” Lestrade looked immensely relieved.

“Not a chance, when Johnny Wasted is available.”

“What? You know him?”

John, wide-eyed, sat up straighter at the mention of his old punk moniker and cleared his throat.

“Oh, jeez,” Lestrade frowned. “How did I not—”

“No worries,” John reassured him with a smile. “I got old.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Lestrade fired back, and offered his hand for John to shake. “Would you?”

John looked to Sherlock for confirmation, and Sherlock nodded.

“Yeah, sure,” John shrugged. “Why not?”

“Cash up front,” Sherlock intoned.

“You know I’m good for it,” Lestrade protested.

“It’s fine,” John said, shrugging off his leather jacket onto the sofa and rolling his wrists a bit. “Just the one song?”

“There are eleven, actually.” Lestrade looked sheepish.

John sighed and raised his eyebrows, but only said, “Right, then. Have you got any beer?”

Three hours and two beers later—the former _Johnny Wasted_ at thirty-seven could not hold his alcohol like he’d done at twenty—John and Sherlock were walking the long pavement of the Longfellow bridge in the dusky golden glow of sunset over the Charles River. John had worked up a sweat, playing steady and adding fills where fills were wanted, hitting hard but not as hard as he could—it wasn’t his band, after all, and he wouldn’t even get credit—and Sherlock had looked at him through the plexiglass window with alternately critical and pleased expressions. The best bit by far, though, was the two hundred bucks in the inside pocket of his leather. Sherlock had rolled up the remaining fifty like a cigarette and tucked it into his pack of smokes. Not only were they nightclub impresarios, now they were flush enough to feed themselves, buy a couple of forties of Cisco to take home, and splurge on taking a bus instead of walking from the Common to the channel, where they’d spend their first night in their new digs—the illegal studio apartment above the club.

“You still play well,” Sherlock told him.

“I’m surprised you remember enough from back in the day to compare.”

“I remember everything,” Sherlock said haughtily.

“Bit of a historian, then, are you?” John asked.

“It’s not _history_ , John.” Sherlock shook free a cigarette. “It’s _life_.” He offered the pack to John, who refused, then tucked it back into his jacket. He bit down on the butt end as he fished for matches in a different pocket, then struck one and lit up.

“Smoking’s bad for you,” John told him.

A sly half-grin. “Really? I hadn’t heard.”

“Since you already went ahead with the lease and that, I imagine you’ve already named the club, too,” John ventured.

“Of course not.”

“So, we’ll call it—what?—something ‘70s punk? Name it after the 101 or something?” John offered. He did not deign to suggest naming it for one of the stalwart American clubs of that era—CBGB or the Mudd Clubb—they were still proper London punks, after all, even if he did feel like his wrists may be getting arthritic.

“I was thinking something more sort of generic,” Sherlock replied, “ _Repo Man_ -ish. Just: The Club.”

“A bit of the address, maybe? Baker Street. . .Oh, just 221B. B. The B?”

“Just the letter B?” Sherlock asked, flicking ash off the glowing end of his cigarette over the rail and into the river. “Or a buzzing, insect-bee?”

“I was thinking of the letter, but now you say it. . .The Bee? Or. . .Stinger’s?”

Sherlock looked alarmed.

John raised, then lowered his eyebrows into a frown. “I think ‘221B’, then.”

Sherlock nodded tightly. “Yeah.”

Just as John was about to reply, there was a loud, messy shattering a yard or two in front of their feet, followed by a bellowed, “It’s not Halloween, faggots!”

“Oh, Christ,” John muttered. “I’m too old for this shit.”

“You girls lost?”

There were three of them, in cargo shorts and hooded sweatshirts and worn baseball caps proclaiming them fans of all the local sports teams. John was relieved to note only one of them was wearing boots—of the sturdy, beige sort worn by construction workers, steel toes and all—though he immediately regretted his day’s choice of mismatched Converse over his Doc Martens curb-stompers.

“How are you in a fight?” Sherlock asked under his breath, and flicked his cigarette away into the street.

“Used to do OK,” John said. “I should ask you the same.” He found it difficult to believe skinny, chain-smoking Sherlock would last very long.

“Shouldn’t you faggots be down the Ramrod tonght?” one of the jocks spat.

“It’s kicking off, either way,” John said quietly, grim with resignation.

“This is the fun bit,” Sherlock replied, then raised his voice to match the other fella’s. “You of all people, Sean, know perfectly well that the Ramrod is only open Thursday through Saturday.”

The jocks all three started roaring, one with furious indignation, the other two with scornful shock at their buddy being called out by name. The three visibly puffed up, then charged.

Twenty minutes later, Sherlock and John crashed through the door of the club now christened “221B,” twisted the (really completely inadequate, now John was looking) door locks, and collapsed breathless against the wall by the box office window.

“That. . .” John huffed, smiling a mile wide, “Was the most ridiculous thing I have ever done.”

Sherlock laughed and said sardonically, “You tried to make a living off of the Lollapalooza Festival.”

“That wasn’t just me.”

Sherlock jerked his head toward the club’s main room. “Buy you a drink?”

“Don’t tell me you somehow stocked the bar already, too?”

Sherlock grinned. Upon reaching the nearest bar, he lay his belly atop it, leaning well over to reach beneath. When he regained his full height, he lifted a single bottle of clear alcohol with a red foil label onto the bar top, cracked open the plastic cap with a flourish.

“Does that say Poland Spring?” John asked in disbelief. “Like the bottled water?”

“Poland Spring: what it means to be from Maine,” Sherlock confirmed. He laid a hand around it as if he might lift it, but instead pushed the bottle toward John. “No ice, but it’s been in the fridge.”

John sniffed at the mouth of the bottle experimentally. Gasoline with a hint of isopropyl. He took a mouthful, grimaced, swallowed, and coughed. “Jeezus. That’s awful.” He passed it back and Sherlock threw back a slug of his own, came away sucking his teeth, eyes going pink around the edges.

“Good stuff,” he said tightly.

“Did you really know that guy?”

Sherlock scoffed lightly, shrugging. “Of course not.”

“Then how did you know his name was Sean?”

“We’re in Boston; it was a statistical probability. And in this neighbourhood, twenty-seven percent higher.”

John smiled and shook his head; they passed the bottle again and he felt a flush across his chest as he took his third pull. Sherlock was leaning elbows on the bar, arms folded over each other. John caught sight of his right hand, knuckles bruised dark already, one finger gashed and the blood dry but smeared and flaking over most of his hand. John extended his own hands in front of him to assess the damage. His knuckles, too, were bruised, more red than purple, more on his favoured left than his weaker right. He flexed and curled his fingers a few times.

“All right?”

“Yeah,” John dismissed. “Fine.” He raised the bottle off the bar. “This’ll help.” He took a swig, growing inured to the burn. “You?”

Sherlock splayed his fingers on the bar, then turned his hands palms-up. The ring finger of his right hand looked a bit. . .askew.

“Won’t be giving any hand jobs for a bit, I reckon,” he said, and if his eyes looking up from beneath his down-turned brows were appraising John’s reaction, he hid it nearly perfectly under a casual half-laugh.

“Yeah, no,” John agreed. “Seen a few dislocations before; a stick breaks, the hand holding it keeps on going, hits the metal edge of the floor tom, and forget it.” He stepped close to the bar, shrugged off his jacket and dropped it on the duct-taped seat of a stool nearby. He stared to reach for Sherlock’s wrist, froze midway. “May I?”

“Of course,” Sherlock said, smooth as butter, looking curious.

John nodded at the bottle. “Have another; it’s going to hurt.”

Sherlock did as he was told, and through a clenched jaw muttered, “Be quick about it.”

John pinned Sherlock’s wrist with one hand, and with the other grabbed, pulled, and repositioned the dislocated finger with a popping sound that brought bile up his own throat. While Sherlock cursed him and pounded his good hand on the bar top, John slammed back one last shot of the awful vodka, swishing it around before swallowing, to wash the taste of near-sick off his tongue.

“Sorry,” he managed. Sherlock gingerly tested the finger, bending and flexing.

“Still won’t be jacking anyone off for a few nights, at least.” Sherlock sly-grinned at his own dirty joke.

“Shame. How’s your mouth, though?” John fired back. “You should elevate that—keeps the swelling down.”

Sherlock raised his arm, bent at the elbow, and slid his hand behind his neck; his guitar-player’s bicep caught John’s attention, as did a flick of his tongue to wet his lips. With his raised arm opening his chest and his face tilted down toward John’s, the pose could not have been a more frank invitation. John had seen boys for rent in the Combat Zone whose body language was more subtle.

“Mouth’s fine,” Sherlock told him. “How’s yours?” He lifted an eyebrow.

John looked him up and down, considering. Having met the man only the previous day—though now it seemed like years—they were now business partners in a very dodgy enterprise, and firetrap flatmates. . .to add sex to the mix seemed to be inviting disaster not just to find them, but to rush at them and start throwing wild punches. Then again, together they’d just fought their way past a rush of wild punches, had they not?

John cleared his throat. Sherlock’s hand slithered around to the side of his neck and he tucked two long fingers into the leather dog collar he wore, tugging it outward, and the pale skin of his throat where the leather dug in flushed pink in protest. John’s mind blared warning sirens, lights flashed, red flags waved. For fuck’s sake, there was a giant skull-and-crossbones glaring at John from the front of Sherlock’s black t-shirt; _risk of poisoning, do not eat_.

Sherlock rolled his eyes in an exasperated manner, and turned away from John, sweeping up the vodka bottle as he started to walk across the club’s empty floor toward the stairs that lead to the little flat. “Come up, if you’re still drinking,” he said haughtily, barely over his shoulder, slinking away through the very-dim. As he mounted the first stair he added, “If you’re not still drinking, come anyway.”

John’s head rang with curses. There was potential in the club. This could be his Next Thing. He had two hundred bucks in his pocket thanks to Sherlock; the two of them together—with Sherlock’s deep subcultural knowledge and web of personal connections, and John’s halfway-decent grasp on the business end of things—could really make it work. He knew better by now than to muddle up relationships and business. It was only weeks earlier that other peoples’ need to do so had left John jobless, homeless, and skint. So. Tempting though it was to accept Sherlock’s offer, John would decline. He could keep couch-surfing until they made some money. Better to be safe than—

“Could be dangerous,” Sherlock intoned, from the upper landing, and vanished around a corner.

John sprinted for the stairs.

The room was high-ceilinged, with no plaster or drywall covering its framework, which also meant no insulation. The floor was black linoleum tile, the door to the attached bathroom was half-off its hinges, and the lights were horrid overhead fluorescents that buzzed loud as houseflies, but there was a huge window in one wall, with a view of the channel and the patchwork-lit buildings of the financial district on the opposite bank.

The room itself was larger than it needed to be, and so someone—John suspected the landlady, because no gang of musicians, artists, drug dealers, or other marginal folk would have bothered—had furnished it to suggest three separate spaces. An overstuffed but sagging sectional sofa faced a TV sporting three sets of rabbit-ear antennas. Behind its back was the headboard of the bed, which faced the window. Off to one side was a rectangular, formica-topped table with metal legs, surrounded by four straight-backed chairs that all clashed. There was a small microwave sat on top of a half-size fridge, and the sink must have come from a restaurant—it was stainless steel, very deep, with more taps than seemed strictly necessary, and on the long metal worktop into which it was sunk sat a coffee maker, a kettle, and a wobbly tower of pots and pans.

Sherlock stood near the foot of the bed by the window, flicking open a brass cigarette lighter. He lit a row of varicoloured, stumpy candles melted onto the window ledge. John gratefully swept his hand downward over the light switches to kill the whining fluorescents; the sudden silence roared in his ears and he tangled one foot in Sherlock’s denim jacket and hooded sweatshirt, discarded in a lump on the floor, as he made his way across the room.

Sherlock set a cigarette between his lips and lit it, then flicked the lighter shut and dropped it on the window ledge.

John ditched his own jacket, then threw himself onto the bed, up on his elbows; the mattress wasn’t bad. The quilts were old and probably handmade, and there was a thick stack of them. As he rearranged the pillows behind his back, he could see the bed sheets were thin and soft, clearly quite old given the busy pattern of dinner-plate-size flowers in shades of mustard, rust, beige, and brown. John thought them quite practical for the setting, as they would camouflage food, blood, and cum stains.

Sherlock slouched near the window, smoking.

Clearing his throat, John ventured, “I thought we were going to fuck?”

Sherlock dragged, elegant bruised fingers arranged prettily beside his face, cradling the cigarette between his knuckles. “We will,” he said coolly, then blew out a stream of white-grey smoke from the corner of his mouth.

“What do you like?” John asked, and dug his toes into his heels, letting his mismatched Chucks hit the floor.

“ _You_ like sixty-nine,” was Sherlock’s non-answer, and he wasn’t wrong. “Above or below?”

“On our sides.”

“Mm.” Sherlock nodded. “You like sex with women.”

“Should I call one? Because it’s getting quite late and it turns out you’re a prick-tease.”

“I assure you I’m not.”

Sherlock left the cigarette between his teeth and slipped one hand up beneath the front of his t-shirt, stroking up his torso, dragging the hem up along with his wrist, sliding his palm across his pectorals, baring one rosy-pink nipple. John blew out a hard whuff of breath and Sherlock looked smug.

“You like me.”

“Against my better judgment and despite your sandpapery personality to this point, I suppose I do.” John’s thrumming cock, pressing unsubtly against the front of his workman’s trousers, definitely agreed.

Sherlock started around the foot of the bed, and John’s gaze unshyly followed the motion of his lanky body. He stopped to press the “play” button on a portable stereo’s cassette player, and then adjusted the volume. Bluesy post-punk gothic stuff John liked quite a bit—songs of love and murder that made him feel that his was the last unsaved soul at the revival. Sherlock at last stubbed out his cigarette in a green glass ashtray on a rickety bedside table, then slowly bent at the waist, his hands landing splayed on the bed, sliding toward John, all of him following—knee on the mattress, hand over John’s chest, the second knee, a cat-eyed glint in his candlelit eyes, lips curled up as if he was winning, knee over John’s thighs—until John was caged, lying on his back looking up.

John clasped one of Sherlock’s naked wrists, slid his hand up the sinewy forearm. In a rough near whisper he asked again, “What do you like?”

Sherlock’s answer was a fierce kiss, tongue musty with leftover smoke licking John’s lips open, and John squeezed his arm tighter, lay his other hand on Sherlock’s low back and applied pressure to draw him down, wanting to feel the skeletal mass of him collapsing against John’s chest and thighs.

“Talk,” Sherlock ordered, then kissed John again, and drew one knee up by John’s hip to steady himself, refusing John’s imploring hand.

“Yeah?” John dirty-grinned. “Talk about how I’ve been looking at those long legs of yours, wanting to shove them up onto my shoulders?”

Sherlock hummed, and caught John’s lip between his teeth, growling as he pulled at it.

“And that blowjob mouth, of course,” John muttered, and slipped his hand around from Sherlock’s low back to brush the back of it against Sherlock’s taut, quivery belly, dipping his fingertips behind his belt buckle, inside the waist of his jeans. “Gives a man ideas. What else do you like?”

Sherlock, kissing around John’s jaw, down the side of his throat, tugging at the ring-neck of his t-shirt with his teeth, flared hot breath against John’s skin. “Fight me.”

John growled. “Like it rough?”

Sherlock grunted in the affirmative, lifted and shifted one knee, rocked himself until his thigh was in striking distance, and John rolled his hips to grind his cock against it through far too many layers of clothes. Sherlock said plainly, “No marks. No choking.”

John hummed his understanding, and with surprising agility and quickness, Sherlock caught John by the wrists and pressed them flat against the bed, beside his hips. He shifted and rolled, teasing John while taking some for himself.

“Fight me,” he repeated, and his lips slowly widened into a smirky smile John wanted furiously to bite.

John glanced down between them, taking stock. He was pinned on his back, with Sherlock’s thigh between his legs and his arms trapped at his sides; Sherlock clearly had the advantage and had done from the first second, perhaps even setting him up before asserting a desire to grapple.

John hummed a growl, thrust his hips to one side as he rolled toward the other, just enough leverage in their tangled legs to overbalance Sherlock, who fell onto his side. He still had a death grip on John’s wrist, held low between their bodies, and the two battled for control of each other’s free arms, clenching and pulling, their breath starting to come harder.

John swung a leg over Sherlock’s, trying to reverse their positions, keeping Sherlock down, and caught him by the elbow. He couldn’t get himself upright, though, because Sherlock was holding down the arm he needed to lean on in order to rise. He groaned frustration, and Sherlock sank teeth into his shoulder.

“ _Fuck!_ You said no marks!” John protested, and let go Sherlock’s elbow in order to grip his shoulder instead, hoping to pull—rather than push—himself upward.

“On me,” Sherlock huffed, and at last released John’s wrist, moving both of his big hands toward John’s neck.

“No choking,” John said quickly, and it struck him as weird that he was even in a position where saying it was necessary. He got a handful of the shreddy, scissored-up fabric of what was left of a t-shirt and tried to gain control. Instead of going for John’s throat, though, Sherlock grasped him around the head and jaw and kissed him hard, all teeth and spit, demanding and in a hurry. Once they broke away to breathe, John gusted at him, “Been thinking since we met how you’d look sucking my cock.”

Sherlock moaned, and as he reached to drag John’s shirt up from his waist, the knife-edges of his fingernails scraped over John’s skin—up his back—not kindly. John wrenched his body up and over, catching Sherlock’s long leg with his own, ducking his head to let Sherlock tug his shirt over and off, leaning in and down to nudge aside the torn edge of Sherlock’s shirt, exposing his nipple, ducking to lick and suck at it, pulling hard until Sherlock gasped.

Clutching hard at John’s shoulders, Sherlock wriggled beneath him, a genuine struggle to free himself—fucking hell it was hot, what a bleeding genius this Sherlock Holmes was—and John used what advantage he had to pin one bony hip beneath his own, a forearm planted across the narrow chest to hold Sherlock down while he used his free hand to yank at his belt buckle, and then quick-ripped open the button-fly of his jeans. Sherlock grunted frustration, and scraped the inner edge of his foot along the side of John’s thigh, then his bare calf; he was still wearing his boots.

“There’s about fifteen places in this building I’ve already imagined bending you over,” John muttered, and got a grip on the edge of Sherlock’s jeans, tugging downward, short and sharp, again and again, but gaining little ground.

“Same here,” Sherlock snarled at him, but he was smiling. John let go a sigh.

Sherlock exploited a momentary lapse when John tried to reposition the arm pinning him across the chest, and with a drag and slide, managed to roll John off him so they were once again on their sides, face to face, their legs tangled. Sherlock shoved at John’s chest and shoulder, drawing back, and John chased him, reaching and pulling. Sherlock’s palms splayed against John’s chest, pushing and pushing, and John went on grabbing, tugging.

“I want to bite you all over,” John blurted, and he did—Sherlock’s sturdy, ropy neck; the flexing crescent of his bicep; the tender belly, taut and freckled and surely soft beneath the skin.

“Fuck, kiss me,” Sherlock panted back at him, and at once he let his resistance dissolve, reversed the energy to pull himself closer to John, and they met in a harsh kiss, moaning into each other’s mouths, hands balling into fists around handfuls of clothing, fingers digging in, hips jutting up and back, seeking gratification.

It was quite a while before they were both adequately undressed—Sherlock’s boots in the way, his jeans only around his knees; John’s dark blue Dickies hung up around one ankle—as they alternated fierce grappling with lengthy breaks for intense snogging, pinching each other’s nipples, clutching at thighs and buttocks, teeth scraping and pressing. John surmised Sherlock’s objection to marks was more about preserving the angular handsomeness of his jaw and cheekbones than a real wish not to be bruised—he readily accepted scattered pinches and bites over his neck, arms, and chest, as well as a few open-handed smacks on the arse. The rush of aggression and thrill of frustration as they traded the upper hand, each struggling against the other, made John feel low and wild; it was the most punk he’d felt in a very long time. It was fucking _brilliant_.

“Is there slick?” John muttered, fingers dug into Sherlock’s hip and buttock. “I want to jack you—make you come.”

Sherlock was smearing kisses down John’s clavicle, pinching and tugging at a nipple already rubbed nearly raw. “Here,” he replied, and grabbed for John’s wrist. He lifted John’s palm to his mouth and licked a wet swirl into it. John sucked his teeth and reached, found Sherlock drizzling, swept up some of the slip-sticky fluid into his handful of Sherlock’s spit, and at last took hold of his long, hot prick.

“You hot fuck,” John praised, “Your cock is _so_ fucking hard.”

Sherlock made a strangled sound, and his forehead where it touched John’s temple was sticky with sweat. Sherlock’s breath huffed damp and warm across John’s cheek and lips, and John squeezed the ring of his fingers experimentally, feeling the drag of Sherlock’s foreskin over and off the crown of his cock. With a heavy groan, Sherlock thrust his hips in counter-time.

“Fuck, just listening to you moaning like that could make me come,” John muttered, and steadied his pace, sensing Sherlock was already nearly there. It was no lie; the timbre of Sherlock’s voice was wildly arousing—every rumbling moan so deliciously, undeniably masculine—and John found himself wanting to answer those manly fuck-noises with growls of his own, to wrestle Sherlock down, to fight dirty as Sherlock tried to force his submission. “You’re bloody gorgeous,” John told him.

“My god. Yeah,” Sherlock grunted, and his fingers dug into John’s naked hip, and half-circled his throat, hanging on for leverage as he went on fucking hard into John’s hand, his hips lifted off the bed so he was driving nearly straight down into John’s fist. “Talk, keep talking.”

“I want you to suck my prick,” John rambled, and quick-licked the corner of Sherlock’s mouth. “I want to see those fat lips around it, all swollen and pink.”

Sherlock let go a desperate-sounding hum.

“Yeah?” John prompted. “I bet you’re a brilliant cocksucker. Will you lick my bollocks, too? And finger my arsehole?” John was thrumming head to foot, and his own pelvis rocked despite having nothing to press himself against, and he let go a desperate sound of his own. “I want to come in your mouth; you can spit it on my chest.”

“My _god_.”

John felt Sherlock’s cock thicken in his hand, and his lean body jerked off-tempo.

“Spit it in my face,” John muttered.

Sherlock’s body went taut and still, then his hips jabbed forward hard—then again—and John kept sliding his hand, catching some of Sherlock’s cum on the edges of his fingers and using it to slip easier along his length. Sherlock rolled his forehead against John’s temple, and moaned something that sounded like relief. He inhaled deeply, and his shoulders shook, and all at once he was grappling again, shoving John flat onto his back, leaning heavily on John’s thigh and bicep with huge, clasping hands, and John reached to steady his cock, holding it upright so Sherlock could slide his mouth down on it, which he easily, greedily did.

John scratched and dragged fingers over Sherlock’s shoulder, down his curled back, and Sherlock’s head bobbed, his mouth tight and wet, taking John deeper with each descending stroke. John kept his thumb where it was at the base of his cock, unrolled his fingers to cradle and tickle his own bollocks, and when Sherlock hummed approval, John’s head wrenched backward against the thin pillow and he crushed his bottom lip between his teeth, sucking air.

“Christ, that’s good,” John encouraged. “You’re gunna. . .oh, fuck, you’re gunna make me come.”

“ _Mmm-hmmm_. . .”

Sherlock drew back, swirling his tongue several times around John’s crown, licking the seam of his foreskin, then positioned his lower lip just so beneath and behind, and sucked hard, quick, his head gently rocking. John watched, and it was so good he wanted it to last, tried to think of something awful to distract himself from coming, but all he could think of was Sherlock struggling beneath him, his bony wrists grinding in John’s grip, and all at once the heat jolted through him, and he shouted, reaching and grasping, eyes held wide to watch Sherlock eagerly—skillfully—sucking him right the way through it.

Once John had subsided—melting bonelessly ever-deeper against the mattress, hands falling away, breath heaving—Sherlock knelt up to sit on his boot-clad heels, and pressed his hand to his mouth, then smeared a wide streak of spit and cum diagonally across his chest, leaving a glistening trail and a thick, cream-coloured pearl balanced on the edge of one pink nipple. He smiled, closed-lipped and self-satisfied.

John groaned appreciation, and Sherlock turned his gaze downward, watching his own fingertips draw lazy swirls through the mess on his chest.

Half the candles had gone out. The room was too cold. John kicked his trousers and boxers off his ankle and heard them rumple softly to the floor. He made moves to loosen the bedding so they could get under the quilts.

“Shower?” Sherlock inquired, still drawing patterns over his torso, light and lazy.

“I don’t mind,” John told him, and brushed his palm hard against the topmost blanket, scraping off flakes of Sherlock’s dried cum. Sherlock gave another getting-away-with-it grin, and in a minute he’d unlaced and shed his boots, peeled off his too-tight jeans, and folded himself between the sheets. They lay side by side, not touching, like knives in a drawer, and John wasn’t going to wade into anything that might wreck his bliss by drowning him, so he grunted something approximating a wish for Sherlock to have a good night and rolled away on his side, curling one hand under the pillow beneath his cheek and drawing up his knees a bit.

Sherlock fitted himself snugly around John’s back, opened his mouth and pressed his teeth onto John’s neck at the nape. He growled, and John felt claimed, and he found that was just fine with him.

*

Eleven nights later, three bands were finishing their load-ins; and there was a fella the size of a mountain, called Lee, standing cross-armed by the door; and a college-aged goth girl with razor-thin eyebrows and a black cloud of hair around her pale face sitting behind the box office window; and John and Sherlock had spray-painted **_221B_** on the front wall of the club in bruise-blue and purple shades.

They stood behind the shut front door, in the flyer-plastered hallway that lead to their club—real punk place, like the ones they’d known back in England, in their youth—and Sherlock gave John a crooked smirk.

“You’re a punk,” he said. “In fact you were a _London_ punk.”

“Yes,” John replied, and his own half-grin emerged.

“A hard man?”

“Hard as fuck,” John confirmed.

“Seen a lot of mosh pits then. Violent gigs.”

“Fuck yeah.”

“Bunch of poseurs, too, I bet.”

“Of course. Yes. Enough for a lifetime. Far too many.”

Sherlock wrapped his hand around the door handle, and John followed suit. Sherlock’s other hand reached for the (new, better) locks, and his smile broke wide.

“Want to see some more?”

“Oh god, yes.”

 

 

-END-

 

Some 1990s Boston post-punk, featuring Lee Fisher, who's got a job working at the door. (Yeah, he's big, but he doesn't scare me.)


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